Deadly force

SIGNIFICANCE: Because of controversies about excessive, inappropriate, and discriminatory applications of force to citizens by police officers, fatalities caused by the police have been reduced through training programs, regulations, and court decisions.

To control crime and maintain order in society, law-enforcement officers have traditionally been granted the authority to use physical force to capture or gain control of people who violate the law. American police officers, unlike those in some other countries, carry firearms, and police throughout the country have used their guns to kill people in the course of seeking to enforce the law and maintain order. Police officers have also caused people’s deaths through the use of chokeholds around people’s necks and blows to the head administered with nightsticks, flashlights, or pistols.

The Context of Police Deadly Force

Deaths caused by the police were not randomly distributed throughout the broad spectrum of society but instead occurred most frequently among poor people and members of racial minority groups who lacked the political power to complain effectively about improper police behavior. Because criminal offenders have easy access to firearms in the United States, American police officers know that they risk being shot; therefore, they sometimes overreact to persons whom they suspect of being armed and dangerous. The problem has been compounded throughout American history because of negative attitudes toward poor people and members of minority groups. Police officers have used guns, nightsticks, and chokeholds more frequently in seeking to capture or gain control over people in inner-city neighborhoods. Lethal physical force was applied not only to people suspected of committing felonies but also sometimes to people who argued with officers about parking tickets or failed to cooperate with the police about other relatively minor matters.

During the 1960s and 1970s, as African Americans became more assertive about gaining equal rights and American society became less tolerant of discrimination, many police departments came under sharp criticism for their harsh behavior toward members of minority groups. In the urban riots of the late 1960s, for example, most of the fatalities were caused by police officers’ shooting of suspected looters and rioters. The actual nature and extent of police deadly force varied by city, depending on the training provided to officers and the guidelines developed by police departments for the use of firearms and other physical interventions. Deadly force was more likely to be applied by officers whose police chiefs saw their job as attacking criminal segments of society as opposed to serving the entire public professionally.

Control of Police Deadly Force

Controversies over highly publicized killings by the police led many police departments to develop stricter rules about the use of force. Greater attention was given to the precise situations in which officers would be justified in firing their guns or hitting someone with a nightstick. Officers also received more training in crowd-control techniques and immobilizing holds that would not threaten the lives of resisting civilians. Most important, courts and juries increasingly found police officers and their departments liable for needlessly causing the deaths of citizens. The threat that a city might have to pay millions of dollars in damages to the family of a person killed by police created even greater incentives for police chiefs to address the deadly force issue through stricter guidelines, better supervision, and increased training. Such guidelines still permit officers to use their weapons against armed offenders who pose an immediate threat, but they significantly narrow the circumstances in which it is reasonable for potentially lethal force to be applied.

As a result of these changes, the number of people killed annually by police officers in major U.S. cities dropped from approximately 350 in 1971 to 170 in 1984. Yet the guidelines for officers had developed unevenly, and some states still permitted officers to shoot unarmed suspects if they were suspected of fleeing from the scene of a felony. In 1985, in Tennessee v. Garner, the U.S. Supreme Court provided a common national rule regarding the use of deadly force on fleeing felons. The Court declared that it was an unconstitutional violation of a person’s rights to shoot at an unarmed suspect who is fleeing from the scene of a crime. Under the Fourth Amendment, such actions constituted an unreasonable use of force to seize people.

This ruling helped to clarify and standardize the application of deadly firearms force, but it could not solve the problem completely. Some police departments, including that of Los Angeles, faced further controversy and lawsuits over deaths that resulted from the use of chokeholds—especially given that the holds appeared to be applied most frequently to members of minority groups.

The issue of police use of deadly force, particularly against African American suspects, came to the fore again in 2014, when the Black Lives Matter movement protested the shooting of the unarmed Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and the death of Eric Garner after being placed in a chokehold by police in New York City. The movement subsequently drew attention to a number of other instances of allegedly unwarranted use of deadly force against African Americans, including the deaths of Tamir Rice, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Jonathan Ferrell, Samuel DuBose, and Freddie Gray. Although in most cases police who are charged with crimes in these events are not convicted, in 2021, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. Experts on police use of force testified that Chauvin should have stopped kneeling on Floyd's neck when the man stopped resisting; instead, Chauvin continued to hold him down, and Floyd died. Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for Floyd's murder. However, according to experts, juries usually give police officers the benefit of the doubt in deadly force cases.

Some states employ the "moment of threat" doctrine or similar legislation to protect police officers who use deadly force at the critical point when their life is in danger. However, the doctrine is controversial because it only analyzes the use of force at the moment the officer deploys it. In 2025, the US Supreme Court unanimously rejected the Fifth Circuit's ruling that the use of deadly force was justified in the case of Barnes v. Felix because the "totality of circumstances" must be considered instead of just a moment. The case involved Officer Felix, who stopped Barnes, a driver, for traffic violations. When Felix asked Barnes for his driver's license and proof of insurance, Barnes indicated that he did not think he had the necessary documentation because his girlfriend had rented the car, but it might be in the trunk. Felix ordered Barnes to open the trunk, which he did, but instead of getting out of the car, he opened the car door and started the vehicle. He pulled away despite Felix yelling for him to stop. Felix stepped on the doorsill of the moving vehicle and shot and killed Barnes.

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